Score a Meeting with Just About Anyone
by Dorie Clark | 8:00 AM August 28, 2014
We’re all inundated with meeting requests these days. It’s easy to say no to the egregious ones, like the stranger who recently emailed me to suggest that I meet with him on a specific date so I could provide him with free career coaching. But — though I know better than to ask for pro bono resume critiques — I’ve certainly been on the other side of the equation at various times, having mymeeting requests turned down or ignored altogether. In fact, most of us probably have; in an increasingly time-pressed world, almost no one has the leisure to connect “just because.” Here are the strategies I’ve learned over time to ensure the people I want to meet are more likely to say yes.
Recognize where you’re starting. A good friend can easily drop you a line letting you know they’ll be in your city and suggesting a meetup. “You can write with a presumptive tone at certain levels of intimacy,” Keith Ferrazzi, the author of the networking classic Never Eat Alone, told me during arecent interview. “But you have to lead with certain degrees of currency when you don’t have that level of intimacy.” In other words, strangers should never presume that the other person wants to connect with them — that fact needs to be established first. So in your initial message, you need to give them a good reason (the “currency” that Ferrazzi mentions), which could be anything from a PR opportunity (such as interviewing them for your blog) to something you can teach them (how to improve their search engine optimization) to the opportunity to connect with another guest they want to meet at your dinner party. Make clear the value proposition of getting to know you; otherwise, it’s far too easy for them to underestimate you and assume you don’t have anything to offer.
Start with a modest ask. An hour or a half-hour doesn’t seem like a lot of time. But if you’re one of 20 or 50 requests that week — which isn’t an uncommon number for busy professionals to receive — it can quickly become overwhelming. So don’t ask to meet for lunch; aim smaller, so it’s easy to say yes (a strategy I describe in “How to Land an Interview with a Cold Call”). I recently agreed to a phone conversation with one aspiring author who vowed in his email, “You must have a full schedule, so I will get to the point quickly and can keep the call to less than 10 minutes.” In the end, I didn’t speak with the author for 10 minutes; our call, which proved to be engaging, lasted 30 — despite the fact that I likely would have rejected a request for that amount of time. That’s the same strategy that well-known psychologist Robert Cialdini discovered in his early research on door-to-door fundraising campaigns for the United Way. Adding five words to the standard pitch — “even a penny would help” — doubled contributions. “Because how can you say no if even a penny is acceptable?” Cialdini told me in an interview for my forthcoming book. “We doubled the number of people who gave and no one [actually] gave a penny. You don’t give a penny to United Way; you give a donation that’s appropriate.”
Always find a warm lead. No matter how successful you are professionally, there are always going to be some people you’d like to meet that haven’t yet heard of you. The challenge is to break through and ensure they view you as a colleague — someone “like them” — rather than a stranger impinging on their time. Finding mutual contacts is one of the best ways to do it. Even Ferrazzi, known for his networking prowess, still has “aspirational contacts” he’d like to meet. In those cases, he says, “I leverage others to help with outreach.” Facebook, with its “mutual friends” function, makes this simple; LinkedIn — which charts connections out to the second and third degree — makes it even easier. Having shared contacts introduce you puts you on peer footing and gets your relationship off to the right start.
Just as sitting is apparently the new smoking, time is the new money. No one can afford to give it away carelessly these days. If you’re asking someone you don’t know for a half-hour, or even 10 minutes, you have to think of your request like you’re making a VC pitch. Why should they speak to you? How can you establish your credibility upfront? How will it benefit them? How can you pack the greatest ROI into the shortest time? If you can answer those questions well, you should be able to get a meeting with just about anyone.
DORIE CLARK
Dorie Clark is a strategy consultant and speaker for clients such as Google, Yale University, Microsoft, and the World Bank. She is an Adjunct Professor of Business Administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. Follow her on Twitter at @dorieclark.
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